Al Jazeera Net-London

Social media imposed itself as a difficult number in the British elections, and became an indispensable platform in the election campaign, so that the use of political parties to these sites under scrutiny by the security authorities, and also under the control of the media.

The growing interest in the way each party uses its websites is explained by the UK's manipulation and misinformation of voters during the 2016 Brexit referendum, and also because it was the scene of the biggest political exploitation of Facebook's personal data, championed by Cambridge Analytica. From London based.

Many analyzes agree that the British elections scheduled for December 12 will be described as fateful because they will determine the future of the country and the European Union. Possibility of identifying paid political publications, identifying the content maker and the target group.

Tracking the data in Facebook shows that the attitude towards Brexit is the determining factor in choosing the target group. The Brexit pro-EU party sends its messages to the 45-year-olds who voted for the exit. Labor on young people who see the solution is to change the political color of the British government.

Despite all the measures taken by the websites to curb the spread of false news, and the intelligence services are doing to fight secret groups, especially those carrying the ideas of the far right, there is still concern about the voter victim of exploitation and adopt positions to enter the country in the new maze.

Cambridge Analytica headquarters in London (Getty Images)

Weapon of false news
Prince Nimeirat, a professor of information security at the University of East London, is not surprised by the state of security and media alert in anticipation of the misuse of social media sites in the elections. ".

The expert in cyber warfare that the most important approach to directing public opinion is false news, explaining the way the groups that broadcast such news, first create fake accounts and publish false news, and then monitor the people who interacted with them to be included in the database is flooded A tremendous amount of false news so they turn into a platform to spread this news.

To illustrate the seriousness of the false news, Nimeirat is an example of what happened in the last American elections. There were 80 thousand fake accounts that managed to influence the opinion of 80 million voters directly and 120 million voters indirectly, to conclude that these fake accounts are able to turn all scales. Electoral.

The danger of fake accounts is not confined to spreading false news. The extreme right prefers this method to disseminate information and comments against Islam and Muslims. These accounts are difficult to trace because they rely on secrecy.

Al-Numeirat is pessimistic about the ability of the security and legislative bodies to combat the phenomenon, until Facebook hired 3,000 people to track and delete the false news, yet more efforts are needed.

Shahadat: Voter accepts messages published on websites because he thinks they are issued by ordinary people (Al Jazeera)

Strict legislation
Digital media consultant Bassam Shehadat blames lawmakers in Western countries. "These people are under-aware of the mechanisms of communication sites, and some, given their advanced age, do not keep up with the latest technologies adopted to violate the privacy of users."

Shahadat stresses the role of the authorities in enacting tougher legislation to deter companies trying to exploit personal data politically. "UK lawmakers have a big responsibility because they have seen how false news has helped support Brexit," he says.

He uses psychoanalysis to show how much influence media outlets have on voter choices. The latter "looks with suspicion on political messages in the traditional media, while accepting the most published messages on social media, believing that they come from ordinary people."

Shehadat excludes that companies working in the field of collecting personal data disappear for political or commercial purposes.He is expected to develop their working methods.He has a lot of modern means to disseminate the content that she wants and ensure that it reaches the target group, making it dangerous for democratic systems.